February 15, 2012

Zippy

This post is coming to you from my very own living room, where I'm drinking my very own coffee, and enjoying it as much as I can, since my other suitcase is now by the door, and I'm off to the airport again.  I've had about 10 hours at home, and there's a little voice in my head that keeps saying "Is this smart?" but I can hardly hear it for the rest of me that can't believe what we did on Monday, and that we would have missed it if I'd been the sort of person who thought a 10 hour layover at home wasn't smart.  (Please note: I am not saying I'm smart to have done this, just that I am the sort of person who thinks it's smart.) 

Monday morning, we'd planned to go to this place that somebody said was fun. Monkey Jungle Zipline. The fact that we'd even decided to go was sort of a surprise in a whole bunch of ways.  First, while Erin's the sort of tourist who might do this sort of thing, Mum's really not, and I'm definitely not.  I'm more interested in people and what they're doing than I am going to some theme park but there was something about this that captured my imagination when Erin pointed it out, and I was suddenly keen.  I've never been to a jungle.  I've never ziplined, and monkey's are cool.  I thought Hank would love it, and I had no idea if Mum would, but to ice the cake, 100% of the profits go to a clinic to provide health care who live around there, and the clinic's statistics are pretty amazing.   Erin and I talked to the guy and he said he would take us whenever.  My Aunt Yvonne was arriving in a few days, so we emailed her to see if she wanted to go, and she did - so Monday became the only possible day to go.

Sunday night there was a terrific storm.  Wind like nothing I've ever seen, and then the rain started and then we woke up Monday and it was still raining.  There was brief talk about cancelling and going another day, but since I was leaving on Tuesday, it meant going without me, which I was trying to be big about, but would have been super disappointing.  The troops rallied somewhat, and after a lot of conversation we decided to go - rain or not.  The mini bus picked us up and took us up in to the mountains.  By then the rain had mostly tapered off to sprinkling and misting.

When we got there, the manager did his level best not to be stunned at the Canadians showing up in the "rain and cold" we were told several times (by a couple of different people - all wearing hoodies like 24C was frosty out) that this was "Dominican Snow", which is  a really funny joke under those exact circumstances.   He said that first we would visit the monkeys, and we washed our hands, and he told us that they can touch us, but we can't touch them, and that he was going to give us a little cup of fruit and nuts, and that we could let the monkeys have it, but to be careful not to make sudden moves, or drop the cup, because you can scare or hurt a monkey.   Then he led us in to the massive enclosure where the monkey's live (it's not a cage, it's a several kilometer fenced off piece of the jungle - the monkey's are living very well) and within minutes, the monkey's had seen us, and were making their way through the trees, sweeping, calling and leaping their way towards us.  I stood as still as I could, terrified that I'd make a sudden move and hurt a monkey, and suddenly, we were beset.  I stood perfectly still- or as still as one can stand while monkey's walk on your cleavage.

I heard Erin say "Oh, no, oh no" and turned around to see a monkey on her head.

Hank's monkey waved Hola! (Hank was, of course, perfectly calm)

Yvonne squealed like a little girl.


My Mum, on the other hand - was very much less delighted with the monkeys. 
(I won't repeat what she said about them.  It's less than graceful.)


When we left the monkey area (or escaped the monkey area, depending on your perspective) we were hiked along a path to the place where they get you all outfitted for the ziplining.  At this point, I realized that one of the reasons it had been so unexpectedly easy to get my mum to agree to zipline, was because she didn't know what it was.  As she got kitted out in her harness, helmet, shoes and gloves, I started to wonder if she was really going to like it, but with every passing moment, she seemed more interested, not less.


They gave us a little class on braking and safety and then we hiked again, up to the first platform, and it was then that we started to grasp the idea of what we were doing. This place has 7 ziplines that total 1350m (4400ft) and are about 60m (200ft) off the ground.  The instant they strap you in at the top of this line you realize your mistake. At this point Erin and I both had a brief but neurotic conversation with our guides.  They explained (again) that we're strapped in two ways, that if for some insane reason one of pieces of equipment failed, there were redundancies, that they were going first, that they check the equipment before every rider - that even if you do it wrong they'll take care of you, that it's safe.  It doesn't look safe, but it is very safe.  Erin and I felt a little better.
Then we made the kid go first.

He whipped across the tree tops, smiling broadly the whole way, and braked expertly (although the "monkey guides" were waiting to ensure his gentle landing if he didn't.)

Erin went, then me... then my mum and I admit that I was a little worried about her. Even the suggestion that she might not be able to do something fills her with rage though, so I didn't say anything.  I hoped she'd be able to grin and bear it.  How long could thousands of feet of zipline take? (The answer is a couple of hours, but we didn't know that then.)  Imagine my surprise when my mum came whipping though the trees with a huge smile on her face.

She loved it.  She loved every minute of it, and she was wicked good at it.  We laughed and did the next run - a steeper one with a ton of braking and mum rocked that too.  Hank zoomed, Erin screamed, I was neurotic - Yvonne was - well- Yvonne had some issues.  On the first steep run she was too scared to brake, and came in so fast that I yelled "You're coming in pretty hot there Starbuck" while the guides ran around slacking the wire to slow her down and preparing to catch her, which they did adeptly.

(A quick aside to Yvonne's kids, who aren't going to believe anything about this: Mum, Erin, Hank and I are all willing to send you sworn affidavits indicating that the person in the picture above is indeed Yvonne, and that she did complete a zipline course, and that she was indeed sober at the time, although we decline to comment on any behaviour at the bar post zip.)

After that she braked compulsively out of sheer terror, which meant that she didn't make it all the way across one of them and they had to send out the "Monkey Taxi" to get her.  Still, it was impressive that somebody so scared finished the course at all.  I thought she was going to bail about sixteen times, but on she went, the brave little soldier.  It is possible, that beyond the sheer terror she experienced, the worst part was the dirt. Apparently the gears above you always stir off a little dirt and dust from the cables,  but  it was raining pretty good by the time we were done, and dirt+dust+water=MUD and that mud was spraying and dripping down onto us the whole time we were going.  For Yvonne, our lady of perpetual creams and accessories, this was a real barrier. By the time we were done, we were all dirty-


but Yvonne was particularly out of character.


It was, without a doubt, one of the craziest things we've ever done - and worth it just for the moment that night that Hank said, when I pointed out that the people who had loved it the best were the oldest person and the youngest person, and Hank said that it was because he and Gramy were both courageous.  It's something they have in common, he feels.  He's right of course. 

It was pretty amazing.

Posted by Stephanie at 7:16 AM | Comments (183) | TrackBack (0)

February 10, 2012

Wildlife

Calvin is the gardener here at the small building we're staying at - or that's his official title but it seems to us he does near everything.  He speaks English with the same fluency that we speak Spanish, which is not at all.   It turns out though, that some things don't need words. 

Hank had heard from another Canadian family (this place is filthy with Canadians) that there was a turtle living near here.  We searched for a few days, having only the clues from someone else that it was a turtle, and it was in some sort of box, somewhere off the path.  Mum looked, I looked, Erin looked - and we couldn't find a thing.  Naturally, it was Hank who had the tenacity to keep looking, and he eventually found the box, which was more of an open concrete square.  (This is one of the troubles with us trying a few Spanish words, and them trying a few English - things can get slightly shifted in the translation.  Last night at dinner the cook told us that the dessert had "scratched" coconut.  Turned out that he meant "grated" which makes sense, sort of, and is exactly the sort of mistake we would make in the other direction.)  Hank was pretty sure that he'd seen the turtle go under the water there, but after we'd all squatted by this pool for a bit, we were seriously beginning to doubt him.  We were asking all those insulting questions that grownups ask kids.  "Are you sure it was a turtle?" "Are you sure it wasn't something else? Maybe a plant?" (When I think about it now, I'm not surprised that kids sometime lose their patience with us.)

We went back to the pool nearby, and only Erin hung in there with Hank, and after a little while, Calvin happened by and saw them lurking there in the bushes.  Maybe he remembered being a kid, or maybe he just knew there was only one possible reason why a kid would be squatting by a fetid pool of water, or maybe it's the way that no matter where you go in the world, it seems like kids are just better understood and more welcome than they are in North America, but Calvin walked right over and reached down into the water...

and came up with the turtle. 

Hank was thrilled and vindicated.  Today's Spanish word? 

Tortuga!

Posted by Stephanie at 9:28 AM | Comments (100) | TrackBack (0)

February 9, 2012

Nobody is Scared

There is a gecko in my bathroom. 

This is more or less fine with me, and absolutely fine with Erin and Hank.  It is not, however fine with my mum, who was briefly cornered by said gecko.

When Erin told her that she couldn't believe she was afraid of something so small and harmless, my mum replied in true McPhee form.

"I am not afraid of the gecko.  I am simply very uncomfortable around him."

Posted by Stephanie at 10:14 AM | Comments (160) | TrackBack (0)

February 8, 2012

An Adventure

It's fun to be here with Mum and Erin, but I have to say that for the pure adventure potential, you need yourself an 11 year old boy, and Hank's my man on the ground.  Yesterday we decided to go on an adventure, and after slathering our pathetically Canadian winter skin with sunscreen, off we went.  We had only two goals. Find out what was beyond the little point near our beach, and buy some food.  We're cooking for ourselves here for most meals, and that means adventuring to find out what people here eat,  what it's called and how to prepare it.  So far we really only had coffee, tea, the box milk,  bread, cheese and three apples that we're pretty sure came from Canada, they were so old and yucky.  Apples, clearly are not a Caribbean thing, but we were so tired and confused that first trip to the supermercado, that we bought them just because they were familiar. They were expensive too - so yesterday I was on a mission to find out what produce was local, cheap and good.

Hank and I struck out for the point - walking along the beach and seeing all that we could see.  In the afternoon the wind comes up here, and the kite surfers come out in throngs.  Hank stopped periodically to survey and count them.

(If it matters to you, as it did to Hank, you might like to know that there were 56 kite surfers) On the way we found a stand that sold iced tea (which is nothing like at home, but "still very good" according to Hank.)  When we got to the little point, it turned out that there were three big rocks, and a guy selling shells.  This was not at all disappointing, since for some time as we walked towards them, we thought there was just rocks.  Rocks with shells was very impressive, comparatively speaking.

Still, we hadn't found any fruit or vegetables at all and the gentleman and I figured that maybe there were only restaurants on the beach, not stores, and so we struck our way through a posh hotel, and out to the road.  (There is only one road in Cabarete, so if something is not on the beach, it must be on the road.) We walked along (discovering that the bushes next to us were chock full of a million spiders, which we decided to be very careful about, since, as Hank pointed out "we aren't from here and we don't know what's dangerous."  I was pretty sure they weren't dangerous, but a little danger is a good thing on an adventure, so I didn't disabuse him of the notion.)  After a while we both of us were surprised to come across chickens. 

Chickens, right there at the side of the road, walking around and doing whatever it is that chickens seem to do, with baby chicks in tow. (The baby chicks were a particularly good part of the adventure, and Hank took this picture so that we could show his Gramy and Mum.)

We both agreed that if we were chickens, we would think that the side of the road was a sub-optimal place to trot around with your babies, but again - we conceded that we know little of the motivation of Dominican chickens (or chickens in general) and that maybe the side of the road was the very best place to be.  "We don't know" Hank posited, "what is lurking off the road." 

We kept walking, and saw a little stand up ahead on the road, and as we got closer, we talked about what it might be.  Probably a food place, Hank thought (probably because we were looking for a food place) and we started thinking about what we hoped to find.  I wanted avocados (it seemed like they might grow here, and I love them) and Hank wanted a coconut.  "A coconut?" I asked him.
"Yes," replied Hank, with a great deal of seriousness. "A coconut so we can open it and drink what's inside. You can do that." 
"I know you can do that Hank, or rather, I know it can be done - but how do you do it? I don't know if we should buy a coconut.  I think they're hard to open."
"We could google it."
"True." 

We walked along the dusty road with the chickens until we were at the stand, and lo and behold, it was food.  There were eggs, sitting out in little flats, (that made total sense.  All those chickens had to be doing something) and there were indeed avocados, and tomatoes, and cucumbers, and little bananas, and pineapples. Little oranges, and something that looks not quite like a lime but might be (I don't think it is, but neither Hank nor I had any idea) and this pale green vegetable that we had eaten in a restaurant the night before that was really tasty.  I don't know what they're called, but they're used like potatoes here, even though they're not really all that starchy.  We bought one because we knew they were good, and we thought we could figure out how to cook it.  Most exciting of all.  Coconuts.  Big green fresh coconuts, sitting right there.   Hank and I immediately began to debate the merits of buying one (if you can't get it open, what's the point VS holy cow Stephie it's a coconut I don't care if we can't open it) and eventually the guy who owned the stand took the coconut out of Hank's hands, tapped it, taught him a new spanish word ("dura") and mimed drinking from the coconut.  Hank's face lit right up, and right there, the guy got a machete (machetes are very exciting all by themselves) and whacked away at the coconut, then stuck a straw into it, and handed it to a very thrilled Hank.

I paid for the fruit and vegetables (I think that when they tell me the price, I'm supposed to be negotiating. Haggling isn't really a Canadian thing, and it doesn't come naturally to us as a people.  Every time someone here tells how much it is,  I just give them the full amount, and then they all sort of smile at me like I'm a happy accident that's wandered into their day. Must work on this.) and we walked back the rest of the way along the road back to the house, where we showed off our spoils,

and were welcomed home like the conquering heroes that we felt like. 

We found out what was beyond the point,  We counted kite boarders, we found food, we saw chickens, and we got a fresh coconut.  It could not possibly have been more exciting.  Not in any way. 

PS.  Today's Spanish words: Dura = Hard (that one made sense, once we thought of "durable")  Pina = Pineapple (also made sense, once we thought of Pina Coladas.) Pollo = chicken, Cuanto = how much )

PPS. That was the best pineapple I've ever had.

Posted by Stephanie at 10:09 AM | Comments (208) | TrackBack (0)

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